Good-bye Ljubljana, Hello Venecia!

I woke up fairly early the day we left Ljubljana, and walked down by the river three times, looking for Natasha, but never found her. I enjoyed the city, though, and my feeling of familiarity with it--very comfortable and confident. The festival for children was still going on, and a news crew was there--I got on camera (walking by) 2 or 3 times! :)

View from river near Natasha's stall

 We checked out of the hotel around 10 and hit the road. It was very hot. We ate lunch at IKEA in Trieste, Italy. I never knew you could eat at IKEA, but I had Swedish meatballs with gravy and lingonberry sauce and french fries, and it was pretty good!

Italian countryside--I never got a good picture of the groves of trees we passed. We didn't know what they were, but we saw a lot of them.

We got to our hotel and checked in--it was VERY expensive and did NOT include breakfast like we thought it would. In fact, breakfast cost 15 Euros each, which is about $22! We hugged Josh and J.P. good-bye, and found our rooms. They were so nice. And I had mine all to myself. :)

Our hotel

My very comfortable bed!

That bathtub looked wonderful after sharing one shower (which got the whole bathroom wet) all week!

After settling into our rooms we asked for some info. about getting from our hotel, which was actually outside of Venice, to the old city itself, and then we walked up and down the street checking things out. We found a little grocery store and bought 2 days' worth of breakfast for all 5 of us for 11 Euros total! Nice! So we did NOT buy the hotel breakfast. :) We got croissants, cheese, yogurt, fruit...I was proud of us! We also found a hole-in-the-wall local restaurant where we ended up eating supper--I had spaghetti with meat sauce, and it was so good. Amber and Ashley's spaghetti was so spicy-hot that Amber couldn't eat hers! An old Italian man toasted me and stared at me as we walked away. Creepy!

The small building on the right is where we ate, on the patio behind that gate.

Notice the Coke can next to the Pepsi glass. :)

We ended up buying bus tickets to Venecia, and rode in after supper to see what we could see! We sat by another older, very friendly Italian man who taught us a few words. Venice was VERY confusing. It was truly a maze of small streets, bridges, and tiny alleys which would open up into wide plazas. We eventually realized the map we had was useless, and found our way to St. Mark's by following the signs posted throughout the city, then followed them the other way back to the bus home--after taking a sladoled gelatto break, of course! Creme Caramel--mmm. We found the right bus and made it back to the hotel at 10. A 4-hour "jaunt" in which I was tense and nervous almost the whole time...5 women trying to find our way through the narrow, convoluted streets in the darkening dusk...I was thrilled to take a wonderful long bath and climb into my comfortable luxurious bed--aaaah!

Can you imagine living behind one of those doors?

Rialto bridge, where banking began

These are the yellow signs posted throughout the city we learned to look for and follow. I started giving invisible stickers (an old trick from my kindergarten teacher days-ha) to whichever girl found them first when we didn't know which way to go.

There were also "hand-made" signs, but they always made me a little uneasy. What if someone pointed one the wrong way just to laugh at tourists?

St. Mark's square

Plaza Roma, where we had to figure out which bus to get on to get back to our hotel. Sca-ry! (And this picture was actually taken when we first arrived--it was dark when we were going back.)

Last day in Ljubljana

On our last full day in Ljubljana, we had told J.P. that we'd like some time to go back to all the places he'd been telling us all week would be good places to buy souvenirs. He thought that was a good idea...but I don't think he realized that for 5 women, shopping would be an all-day event! We went back to the market, plus to some good shops he told us about, and I was even able to talk to a couple of women and leave cards with them. There was a children's festival going on, and it was so neat seeing all those kids' faces. It gave me all kinds of ideas for future mission trips. :) J.P. left us after we had lunch at a French bakery, but left Josh with us to show us around. Poor Josh! Some of the girls were shopping for clothes at a 3- or 4- story building for longer than I wanted to, and I needed some contact solution, so by myself I went into a store that looked promising--turned out it was several stories, too, and I ended up having to ask for it. The first sales lady I asked didn't understand, but she found one who did, and led me to the one choice available to me. I was proud of myself again. (I'm so silly.)
And most of the girls still weren't done shopping! So Amber, Josh, and I left them there and told them to meet us at the middle bridge of the three bridges, and we went to find Natasha again as well as hit some other shops. Well, they came back while we were gone, and left, and we kept missing each other, and once we thought we even lost Josh, but we finally all met up again and went back to our hotel to rest and pack. That night we had supper at the Manley's home--yummy taco salad and chocolate chip cookies! We had a good time, and a good discussion time about the trip. J.P. and Josh walked us back to the hotel (along with their yellow lab Jessie). It was already dark, and there was a very popular concert taking place in the square. It was exciting-

Remember these bee hives we saw on our first day?

These are wooden "bee hive covers" based on what the farmers used to use!

This is the one I bought. :)

 

Purebred dogs were very popular. I didn't see any mutts the whole time!

 

This is Preseren Square, which was right around the corner from our hotel. The statue in the middle is Preseren, a famous Slovene poet. If you follow the direction of his eyes, he is looking...

 

...at this young girl, who was the inspiration for his love poems. She was my inspiration to turn left. :)

Our day in Koper

J.P. and Josh picked us up at the bus station by the post office and drove us to Koper, a town with about 23,000 people on the Adriatic Sea. When we got there we met with Kirk, an American missionary, and Irvin, a Slovene believer, at Irvin's mother's house. We talked and prayed together, as Irvin's mother brought out princeskas (delicious cream puffs!!) and Turkish coffee. Then Irvin led us to Tus (pronounced "toosh") Planet, where we had pizza for lunch.

Kirk and J.P. at Irvin's mother's house

Irvin and the gang

After lunch we went to the center of town to pass out fliers telling about a re-showing of Nick Vujucic's visit there. It went pretty well, but was also pretty hot.

The team (minus me) with Irvin.

The square and bishop's palace in Koper

Irvin talking to two girls

Josh sharing with a girl

Notice that this tower is "antient"!

Next we drove to the seaside area to prayerwalk the neighborhood where the missionaries live. They split us up into two groups based on who wanted to avoid the steep hill--that's the group I wanted in! Well, we still ended up climbing a VERY steep hill, and it was SO HOT I thought I was going to pass out. I was thinking, "I'd hate to see what they call the steep hill!" I had to stop once to gulp some oxygen take a picture, and thankfully we prayed at the top, which gave me another chance to catch my breath. I was drenched with sweat by the time we were done, and everyone else was, too, so J.P. drove us to Portoroz, another town on the sea, to cool off. It was much cooler by the water, especially after we soaked our feet in the sea, sat in the shade, and ate sladoled! (chocolate this time.) That's when we discovered that this time Lauren had lost her camera, so we went back and looked for it, but it was gone. I felt so bad for her. We got back to Ljubljana around 9:00 and ate Chinese food, which was actually very good! It started raining and thundering and lightning as we left for the hotel.

This was my excuse to stop and try to breathe!

Praying with Lee, a local church planter

Praying with Dante, another church planter

Sladoled time!